Samuel Beckett wrote Watt while hiding from the Gestapo during the second world war. It describes Watt’s journey to, within, and away from Mr Knott’s house, where Watt lives for some time as a servant.

In a new collaboration, Paul Kelly has joined singer Camille O'Sullivan and pianist Feargal Murray to set 100 years of Irish poetry to music. As the emerald isle is sung into being, the words of Yeats and Joyce still stand out.

Tony Morrison's Desdemona, which opens today in Melbourne, asks many questions of its audience. Perhaps most pressingly: what does it really mean to listen, rather than hear?

Every year thousands of students read George Orwell’s 1984 and are doubtless convinced that its perspective on language and power is “definitive”. Except that it’s not; and hasn’t been since at least the 1970s.
Manuel Harlan/Melbourne FestivalOktober 14, 2015

Many still regard George Orwell’s 1984 and its message about the nature of language and power "definitive". But globalisation has revolutionised how we communicate; 1984 tells us nothing about our future.

The founders of Belgian dance company Peeping Tom draw their performance language from the influential Flemish Wave movement of the late 1980s and 90s. Their 32 rue Vandenbranden is part of Melbourne Festival.

Goebbels has a deft hand at creating moments that surprise, turning the surreal and the macabre into exquisite moments of beauty.
Photo: Wonge Bergmann, Melbourne FestivalOktober 24, 2014

When the mountain changed its clothing, the Heiner Goebbels-directed show currently on at the Melbourne Festival, is an evasive piece of theatre, but it is through its elusive and mysterious qualities…